#D10 – 24 Hours of Feminist Action Around the World / World March of Women International Declaration

On the next Monday, 10th December, World March of Women National Coordinating Bodies and Participating Groups will be on the streets of more than 25 countries, from midday to 1 pm (local time in each country), during the 24 hours of Feminist Action across the World (click to see the map of actions in: http://carte.24heures2012.info/)

We’ll be mobilised in our streets, public spaces and communities across the world to give visibility to, and highlight, the five values in our Women’s Global Charter for Humanity – equality, justice, freedom, solidarity and peace; to express our views on the current socio-political-economic context; to demonstrate our resistance against militarisation, the criminalisation of protest and

attacks on women’s rights; to strengthen our national and local struggles (be they for the right to abortion and public health services, against austerity measures, against colonialisation, for climate justice, for peace, etc)

We invite all the social movements to join us, to mobilize and to spread among your contacts the action and the WMW international declaration for the journey. We share with you the specific links to each tool for mobilization as well as the international declaration (below and attached) and the logo for the action:

Today, on the 10th December 2012, we, the activists of the World March of Women, shall carry out actions within our communities between midday and 1pm. Starting in New Caledonia and across the globe until reaching Seattle, we will be mobilised during 24 hours, to demonstrate our awareness towards what is happening in the world, the attacks perpetrated on women’s rights, and to make our acts of resistance as well as our alternatives known.

Eight years ago, during our International Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2004, we approved our Women’s Global Charter for Humanity after a long process of collective construction. At that moment, we asserted that: “We women have been marching a long time to denounce and demand an end to the oppression of women and to the domination, exploitation, egotism and unbridled quest for profit which breeds injustice, war, conquest and violence… We are building a world in which equality, freedom, solidarity, justice, and peace are its driving forces. A world which, through our own strength, we are able to create.”

Today, in 2012, our efforts to find other ways to organise our lives that overcome patriarchy, capitalism, racism and lesbophobia have become even more relevant as we face the systemic crises and the false solutions promoted for them. The economic crisis is worsening the problem of unemployment, which is being met with austerity measures and cuts to social policies. The only response given to the environmental crisis and climate change is the privatisation of nature. The impacts of the care-work fall largely on women’s shoulders crisis, as they remain responsible for, and burdened with, caring for the most basic needs we all have. These false solutions are imposed by corporations and financial technocrats who have captured the political arena, as well as by the criminalisation of social struggles, and the increase of militarisation. They strengthen themselves through the promotion of conservatism, an increase in attacks by different religious fundamentalists, the increase in all types of violence against women, as well as through the control and commodification of our bodies, and the weakening of our rights and of the progress that we women have made.

The Filipino poet Joe Barrios summarises it best: to be a woman is to live in a constant state of war.

We women weave the very fabric of our lives against the backdrop of permanent crisis. We build alternatives for the production and preparation of food, for care-giving, in the solidarity economy, in community radios and in many other mediums of communication within our social movements, and in popular celebrations exempt from sexism and discrimination. We develop counter-hegemonic practices which join with our alternatives built on people’s power, which recover our grandmother’s memories as well as that of many other feminist activists, which re-establish harmony between humans and the environment, which invite us to debate what a life worth living is.

We propose building another world where exploitation, oppression, intolerance and exclusion no longer exist, and where integrity, diversity and the rights and freedoms of all are respected.

Together we carry out a common action on the 10th December, as we strengthen resistance in our respective countries and throughout the world:

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